Steven Okazaki is no stranger to dark, depressing narratives-his documentary subjects include survivors of the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, teenagers with drug addictions, and Japanese internees. But there was no way that he could have prepared himself for the realities of Cambodian genocide that he encountered in interviewing the individuals who literally stood by as thousands of men, women and children were murdered by the Khmer Rouge.

"In this film we were face to face with individuals who committed unspeakable acts of cruelty that were really beyond anything I could fully understand and process," said Okazaki. "I heard stories that when I heard them I just shivered. Emotionally, it was the most difficult thing I've done."

Okazaki's The Conscience of Nhem En, is nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary short. It focuses on a then-16-year-old photographer who took the photographs of 6,000 prisoners before they were executed. While the film also contains the stories of three survivors "who were amazing and really admirable for their dignity," Okazaki found it challenging to include the voice of a main character who seems to have lost his humanity.

"Usually with the documentaries I've made, the main characters are people you admire and you want the audience to get to know, and the main character in this film was a cold-hearted cruel person," he said. "I think perhaps he thought he could control the media in a way that would present him as an admirable person."

Whatever the motives of the participants in the film, Okazaki believes the story will bring important attention to the war trials that are now beginning in Cambodia after 30 long years. If Cambodia feels that the world is watching, there may be a better chance that the trial will be fair and justice will be served. Further, he hopes that Americans will consider the impact that our country can have when becoming involved in other countries. He cautions that the man in the film felt like he was just doing his job, and that he had no choice because his own part was so small, but the truth is that he participated in a genocide that killed 1.7 million people.

Okazaki has been nominated for an Academy Award three times, and won with his film Days of Waiting in 1990. Days of Waiting focused on Estelle Ishigo, one of the only Caucasians interned alongside the Japanese Americans during World War II. Ishigo refused to leave the side of her Japanese American husband, and experiences all of the travesties of living behind barbed wire. The film illustrates her story with sketches and paintings she created while interned at the Heart Mountain War Relocation Center in Wyoming.

Okazaki's other past-nominated films include Unfinished Business, which examines the cases of Min Yasui, Gordon Hirabayashi, and Fred Korematsu-three Japanese Americans who resisted internment in different ways and went to jail. Forty years later, the three men go to court to have their sentences overturned, and Okazaki is there to document their stories. HIs 2005 Oscar®-nominated film, The Mushroom Club, documents Okazaki's trip to Hiroshima to talk to survivors of the atomic bomb nearly 60 years after the devastation.

Since this is Okazaki's fourth time going to the Academy Awards as a nominee, he says he isn't nervous, he just hopes that people will respond to the film. He counts awards shows as one of the necessities of being part of the film industry, and believes that they have undergone many changes since the start of his career-not only is there more media coverage of the entire event, but the documentary category also draws more attention than it used to.

"The first time I went was 1985 and that was nerve wracking and exciting," he said. "It's changed a lot. It was a different time when media was not so crazy, and being in the documentary category you didn't have to deal with very much."

Nevertheless, he enjoys the experience of going to the award shows because of the connection it gives him to the larger film industry and Hollywood community.

"Basically you spend a lot of time working alone or with a small group of people and don't see yourself as part of Hollywood in many ways," he said. "But it's interesting to see, to visit, to be able to observe it every so often."

One of the downsides to the larger Hollywood community for Okazaki is that he believes Asian Americans are still largely pigeon-holed into stereotypical roles, as both actors and directors. As a veteran filmmaker he is lucky to be able to make the kinds of movies that he wants, but he still finds the number of Asian Americans getting honored at such award shows "rather dismal compared to what an important part Asian Americans play in our society and in our culture in general."

While it is his goal to do a wide range of filmmaking-even including feature films, and more light-hearted documentaries-and open all possibilities for himself, he still hopes to tell stories about the Asian American community in the future. Of his latest projects, one is a "rather ambitious" documentary about Asian American artists from 1900 to the present, while another is a documentary about children in Seattle who are abandoned by their parents.

"For me the biggest danger is being bracketed as one thing, or being limited to do only one kind of film or genre," he said. "That's what I've tried to put my energy into-to fully express myself as a filmmaker."

The Conscience of Nhem En will air on HBO sometime this year.